Richard: Coming to San Francisco, especially the Mission District, was an amazingexperience for me after living my life in Southern California, in a littletown. But I had just come from Latin America, so it was foreign, but at the sametime it was familiar.But the Mission District especially is amazing.There is nothing like it.I mean, the most amazing thing about being in this neighborhood, especially justwalking in the Mission, is the idea of,there is like little stuff everywhere.

This is such a visually rich community and place. I just love it.It really feeds into my need to capture it all. Oh, this is great.I love this. Hold on.You wait long enough and somebody passes through your frame, which is great.It's really just an impulse about what appeals to me.

There is so much here.It could be anything, but I just kind of go with my gut.We all have that inclination when we have a camera to take a picture, and all Idid was learn the idea not to resist that.Every time my finger wants to press the trigger for whatever reason, I don't question it.I just do it. Oh, it's great!Traveling in Latin America was really what started my passion for streetphotography, for this, for like what I kind of call "the hunt."And to be able to come here and do it and feel it is amazing, but that'scertainly where it started.

Hunt, hunt, hunting, right? Like HUNT'S Quality.How many times does that happen?To me street photography is about instinct, reacting quickly, not having tothink about a lot of factors.This little camera, this basically little point-and-shoot does that for me.The other thing that's important for me, like I just took a picture there, and Ireally feel like I have possibly captured that person in a real situation.

I think had I brought the camera up to my face and taken some time to do somethings, she would have not been as natural.I am ridiculously, stupidly passionate about taking pictures.It's really liberating for me.Oh, this is nice.Right, I mean that is a sweet little moment,two people waiting for the bus up against the wall.

They are just--I don't know I love that. I love that.This is just the art of discovery, right.That's all good storytelling really is in anyway: making a reader or aviewer feel like they've discovered something for the first time the way I discovered it.It's just, it's little tiny silly things, like maybe that.

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Author

Updated

9/8/2011

Released

12/22/2010

This installment in the lynda.com Creative Inspirations documentary series features Richard "Koci" Hernandez, a national Emmy® award-winning video and multimedia producer who is at the forefront of the next generation of journalism. Retracing his steps, Koci shares how he began his obsession with photography and his love of visual storytelling with a trip to the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite. Thirty years and three newspapers later, he finds himself teaching multimedia storytelling at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Koci is known for inventing techniques on the fly, often teaching himself new software just moments before completing a project and incorporating fresh ideas with stunning results. Koci readily learns as much from his students and blog readers as he teaches them, and openly shares with us his constant journey of discovery.

In Bonus Features, Koci is interviewed by Graduate School of Journalism colleague Jeremy Rue at the Pacific Film Archive Theatre, University of California, Berkeley.